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Memories and Portraits-Part22_ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON(1850-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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same idea, all chiming together like consonant notes in music or

like the graduated tints in a good picture. From all its chapters,



from all its pages, from all its sentences, the well-written novel

echoes and re-echoes its one creative and controlling thought; to



this must every incident and charactercontribute; the style must

have been pitched in unison with this; and if there is anywhere a



word that looks another way, the book would be stronger, clearer,

and (I had almost said) fuller without it. Life is monstrous,



infinite, illogical, abrupt and poignant; a work of art, in

comparison, is neat, finite, self-contained, rational, flowing and



emasculate. Life imposes by brute energy, like inarticulate

thunder; art catches the ear, among the far louder noises of



experience, like an air artificially made by a discreet musician.

A proposition of geometry does not compete with life; and a



proposition of geometry is a fair and luminousparallel for a work

of art. Both are reasonable, both untrue to the crude fact; both



inhere in nature, neither represents it. The novel, which is a

work of art, exists, not by its resemblances to life, which are



forced and material, as a shoe must still consist of leather, but

by its immeasurable difference from life, which is designed and



significant, and is both the method and the meaning of the work.

The life of man is not the subject of novels, but the inexhaustible



magazine from which subjects are to be selected; the name of these

is legion; and with each new subject - for here again I must differ



by the whole width of heaven from Mr. James - the true artist will

vary his method and change the point of attack. That which was in



one case an excellence, will become a defect in another; what was

the making of one book, will in the next be impertinent or dull.



First each novel, and then each class of novels, exists by and for

itself. I will take, for instance, three main classes, which are



fairly distinct: first, the novel of adventure, which appeals to

certain almost sensual and quite illogical tendencies in man;



second, the novel of character, which appeals to our intellectual

appreciation of man's foibles and mingled and inconstant motives;



and third, the dramatic novel, which deals with the same stuff as

the serious theatre, and appeals to our emotional nature and moral



judgment.

And first for the novel of adventure. Mr. James refers, with



singular generosity of praise, to a little book about a quest for

hidden treasure; but he lets fall, by the way, some rather



startling words. In this book he misses what he calls the "immense

luxury" of being able to quarrel with his author. The luxury, to



most of us, is to lay by our judgment, to be submerged by the tale

as by a billow, and only to awake, and begin to distinguish and



find fault, when the piece is over and the volume laid aside.

Still more remarkable is Mr. James's reason. He cannot criticise



the author, as he goes, "because," says he, comparing it with

another work, "I HAVE BEEN A CHILD, BUT I HAVE NEVER BEEN ON A



QUEST FOR BURIED TREASURE." Here is, indeed, a wilful paradox; for

if he has never been on a quest for buried treasure, it can be



demonstrated that he has never been a child. There never was a

child (unless Master James) but has hunted gold, and been a pirate,



and a military commander, and a bandit of the mountains; but has

fought, and suffered shipwreck and prison, and imbrued its little



hands in gore, and gallantly retrieved the lost battle, and




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